5 Procurement Pain Points Commonly Faced by Organisations

Streamline procurement process

• There are plenty of organisations relying on manual processes as part of procure-to-pay activity. Manual processes can be ineffective and time-consuming, not to mention the increase in risk of error or omissions. Information can also be manipulated if not properly controlled.

Supplier collaboration

• Poor supplier relationships can cause major problems for organisations. As businesses grow it can become difficult to keep track of every stage in the supplier chain, which in turn can cause issues such as inconsistent view of products or pricing, lack of visibility for delivery date, missing invoices, delay in resolving disputes and late payments.

No purchase order, no pay

• Out-of-date systems may require a manual paper purchase order before invoices can be processed and many finance systems aren’t robust enough to allow three-way or two-way matching based on supply. Lack of automated invoice matching and electronic document management can create serious delays in the P2P cycle, costing time and money.

Governance and compliance

• Lack of governance within a finance solution can cause users to order unapproved items, and in general, will lead to a lack of control over spending. In addition, pricing points may become confused, improper coding of transactions can take place and people may end up purchasing from unapproved suppliers.

Reporting

• It’s not uncommon for organisations to rely on multiple spreadsheets with complex Excel formatting to carry out reporting, and legacy finance systems can lack the provision of meaningful information. Manual reporting of offline or disparate data takes significant time and, as well as being prone to error, does not provide insights to support proactive decision-making.